"The story is that Ellen was watching me in her dressing room - and asked security if I looked weird or suspicious or something like that. My friend who works on the show overheard her and told Ms. Degeneris that I was a friendly - there is a little more to the story but I will keep that secret. But I was not at all asked to leave. If you do not dance with the creeps you are seen as a creep."

We'd completely forgotten that our favorite former Disney CEO had a cute little chat show over on CNBC (we'll have to do some research and figure out if we get that channel), until a helpful tipster forwarded us this clip from an upcoming episode of Conversations with Michael Eisner, reminding us of all the fun we've been missing out on by excluding it from our TiVo season pass list. We have no idea about what other delights are in store for us if we tune in on Monday night, but we imagine nothing that happens can top burgeoning trading card mogul Eisner and old buddy John sharing a laugh—and a stick of decades-old gum—over the actor's Barbarino rookie card. Don't eat it, Michael! It tastes like the 70s!

As we mentioned yesterday, parole-violator Paris Hilton's sentence will require her to serve a minimum of 23 days of her 45 day sentence, because "the state allows time off for good behavior." She'll call Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood home during that time, where she'll serve her sentence away from the general prison population, in one of the 12 two-person cells in Lynwood's special needs housing unit, where "police officers, public officials, celebrities and other high-profile inmates" are kept. And despite some strong admonitions from the Sheriff's Department, leading paparazzi outfits are already calculating how to get their hands on the orange-jumpsuited money-shot:

· Oh, right: The CW also announced its Fall schedule. Veronica Mars fans, grab your pitchforks and torches, because your favorite show's not on it. But maybe the pick-up of Gossip Girl will make you feel better about things? [Variety]
· 300's Gerard Butler will star in Game, a near-future dystopian thriller in which people control other people in "mass-scale, multiplayer online" games, with Butler playing a warrior who tries to "regain his identity and bring down the system that has imprisoned him." Pitch: The Running Man meets The Matrix meets Second Life, sort of. [THR]
· Remember those scenes in Heat where Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro appeared together? If that gave you a moviegasm, you're probably not going to be able to handle Righteous Kill, a feature-length act-off between the stars of Two for the Money and Meet the Fockers. [Variety]
· David Fincher circumvented his "no more serial killer movies" rule for Zodiac by thinking of it as a "newspaper movie in which I get to torture Jake Gyllenhaal for the last two hours." [THR]
· Cannes attempts to spice up its opening night by eschewing its usual sit-down dinner in favor of allowing guests to roam the room with their cocktails, ingesting finger foods as needed to avoid passing out. [Variety]

It's Day Four of the upfronts, that special mid-May week during which network executives lure advertisers to fancy venues, use elaborate presentations about their Fall programming to trick the media buyers into believing that spending their money on unproven shows is any less risky than letting their entire budgets ride on a single roulette-wheel number, and then retire to after-parties to toast their mutual delusions with free booze. Today, Fox wraps up the festivities with the announcement of their slate of new shows, coyly refusing for a fifth straight year to abandon their largely useless development process and switch to a year-round, all-American Idol format.

AfterElton.com has more from the upcoming Advocate cover story featuring reluctant gay hero T.R. Knight: Pressed for his take on what we will heretofore refer to only as The Incident, the actor avoided directly attacking the actions of slur-slinging nemesis Isaiah Washington, as well as seemingly unsympathetic showrunner Shonda Rhymes, choosing instead to answer an entirely different set of innocuous questions that existed only in his own mind:

Tonight, CBS will air Bob Barker: A Celebration of 50 Years on Television, a tribute that will finally send the The Price Is Right legend into the gameshow host afterlife, where he will enjoy the attentions of 72 Barker's Beauties in an idyllic environment free of troubling sexual harassment lawsuits as his just reward for 35 years of dedicated service. While the network has yet to name Barker's successor, it seems that Rosie O'Donnell is renewing her public campaign for the job, undeterred by reports that the retiring host would sooner see an entire shelter full of abandoned pets have their neutering magically reversed than allow the skinny mic to be passed to O'Donnell. She's taken out a full-page suck-up ad in the trades today (above) inviting Barker to her Miami compound, where the two can enjoy a lazy day of Plinko (she's got her own full-size board), inverted yoga-swinging, and some casual conversation about her candidacy.

As a follow-up to yesterday's story about how studios will spare no expense in creating Hollywood-quality promotional spectacles at Cannes, we present this photo of Bee Movie star Jerry Seinfeld, who gamely donned a bee costume, was affixed to a zip line, and then thrown off the roof of the eight-story Carlton Hotel, eventually alighting on a pier prominently displaying the movie's logo. While the stunt apparently was carried off without incident, there has to be a part of DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg that secretly, selfishly hoped the cord would snap and send Seinfeld crashing into the sea (Just enough to make a little splash. Oh, come on, don't be like that! It's not like he was going to cut the rope himself. If it happened, it happened.), creating an even more intense buzz for their upcoming film.

· Victims of the upfronts II: Pam is down! We repeat, Pam. Is. Down.· (Don't worry, she's going to be OK.)
· The Lede blog rounds up the misguided commercial-to-sitcom projects of the past.
· While a Shrek the Third drinking game sounds mildly diverting, we'd instead recommend that you get so shitfaced at home that you can no longer drive yourself to the theater.
· Paris Hilton: object.
· At the end of M. Night Shyamalan's open house, prospective home-buyers discover that the mansion isn't actually for sale. (The clues, of course, were right in front of their eyes the whole time.)

As prosecutors laid out their airtight case in the matter of The People Vs. Paris Hilton, one woman dared to defy popular opinion and stand shoulder to shoulder with the heiress in her darkest hour, laughing defiantly during their arguments, and brazenly asking of the judge, "May I have your autograph?" The woman: Paris's mom, Kathy Hilton, best known as the star of I Want To Be A Hilton, in addition to spawning the polarizing fragrance magnate. In a statement dictated personally to fellow rich ladyfriend Barbara Walters, Mother Hilton had this to say about her daughter's misfortunes:

Fox has yet to officially release its Fall schedule, but we feel confident that nothing they're going to reveal tomorrow can possibly change our opinion about what will be our favorite new show come September: Kid Nation, the bold social experiment in which CBS abandons 40 children in a New Mexico ghost town for 40 days, leaving them to form their own civilization without the interference of adults.

· Music round-up: Patrick Wolf at the Troubadour; Fiona Apple at Largo; The New Deal at the Knitting Factory.
· Tonight is your last chance to catch the "Six-String Masterpieces: The Dimebag Darrell Art Tribute" exhibit at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, a celebration of shredding's fallen hero. [via flavorpill]
· The Every Picture Tells a Story gallery in Santa Monica hosts "My Hometown," a reading by a gang of local writers including Jason Micallef, Jessica Bern, David O'Shea, and to fulfill the famous person quota, Carol Leifer.

· A video obtained by Inside Edition (that's the TV tabloid news program hosted by Deborah "Hey, Everyone! Who Wants To Watch That Dowdy Old Jane Pauley When You Can Have Me Instead! What? I'm Fired? I Guess I'll Slum It At Inside Edition Until Something Better Comes Along. Girl's Gotta Eat!" Norville) has obtained a videotaped testimonial made shortly after Lana Clarkson's death, intended for posting on his site, in which he swears up and down he didn't pull the trigger. "She may have accidentally taken her life, she may have been eating the gun...she may have been doing anything," were some of the alternate theories he offered, says InsideEdition.com, adding a fascinating gun-gobbling angle to the mystery that the defense has yet to explore. [InsideEdition]

Sensing that the trainwreck represented by her brief comeback tour has lost valuable tabloid column inches to Lindsay Lohan's coke video and Paris Hilton's victimization by the Los Angeles justice system, Britney Spears has resorted to the reliable publicity ploy of releasing a new Letter of Truth on her website. With no fresh scandals or disturbing acting-out episodes for which to apologize to her loyal fans, the LOT's timing is curious; perhaps her talk of a "trying time" is meant to prepare us for a pre-planned meltdown at this Saturday night's Orlando House of Blues show, during which she'll raffle off her youngest child to a lucky concertgoer and then self-immolate during the final, lip-synched bars of deep first-album cut "E-mail My Heart."

While the recently disseminated mugshots of Chris "Formerly of HBO" Albrecht and David "Bud Bundy" Faustino did little but remind us of the vaguely depressing fact that the rich and famous don't photograph any better than the average person with a camera jammed in their face at their lowest moment, in the right hands, these booking photos can aspire to something like Art. (Though we might argue that Nick Nolte needed no such help.) BoingBoing points us to the "Warholized" version of some of notable jailhouse subjects featured in the Hollywood's Most Wanted exhibit currently on display at the ArcLight, where moviegoers waiting for their screening to start can wander over from the nearby display exposing Shrek the Third's cinematic secrets and experience Mel Gibson's impishly unrepentant grin in a new way.

In the interest of streamlining our coverage of podiatric oddities and mishaps in the greater famous-people population, we bring to you a round-up of today's top toe-related celebrity health stories, as reported by TMZ:
· Blake "For the Love of God, Please Stop Beatboxing and Win Already So We Can Forget You Ever Existed" Lewis, American Idol final three finalist, reportedly had to see a doctor about a hangnail that turned black. (Warning: The accompanying photo of a toe is marked as "not Blake's," but who can resist lingering over a close-up of a stranger's infection!) We encourage you to tie a yellow ribbon around your own big toe as a reminder that our thoughts and prayers are with Blake at this difficult time, vowing not to remove it at least until the swelling reduces and color begins to return to normal. [TMZ]

Your pilot season gig on ABC's comedy hopeful HeadOn: Apply Directly to the Forehead! HeadOn: Apply Directly to the Forehead! HeadOn: Apply Directly to the Forehead! is long over, and you've just learned that the network has handed over its sole primetime sitcomfomercial slot to the Geico Cavemen instead of your more promising show, leaving you suddenly out of work for the coming TV season. Break the cycle of unemployment with the Defamer Job Board, the leading Defamer-branded job-search tool on the internets!

· Fox reaches into a hat containing slips of paper with the names of actors, wacky situations, and clichéd expressions written on them, producing the Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher project What Happens in Vegas, the story of two people who wake up to discover they've gotten married—and won a huge jackpot!—following a night of debauchery. [Variety]
· Get on the phone with your friends and figure out who's going to host the viewing party: The The Hollywood Reporter's 36th Annual Key Art Awards are coming! [THR]
· Elijah Wood playing Iggy Pop? Sure, why not? After yesterday's announced Tim Allen/David Mamet project, we're open to anything. [Variety]
· Fox signs up 24 for two more seasons, keeping Kiefer Sutherland in beer money through 2009. [THR]
· Cannes kicks off today! Obviously we're not there, so we feel we can be bitterly dismissive of all the Rivieria-side orgies we're missing out on. [Variety]

Concerned that the recent betrayal of a camera-phone-wielding "friend" who exploited a private moment of bathroom stall bonding for her own financial gain might have fragile starlet Lindsay Lohan, like, totally bummed out and junk?, Us Weekly checks in with momager and Enabling Celebrity Parent Of the Year frontrunner Dina Lohan to see how her daughter is handling this latest blow to her post-rehab image:

Of the many key pieces of evidence to click into place in the Phil Spector murder trial, none was more anticipated than the testimony of Spector's driver, Adriano DeSouza. On the fateful night, DeSouza ferried Spector to various WeHo watering holes before eventually bringing his boss and House of Blues hostess Lana Clarkson back to the castle "for one drink." Two hours later, he was startled by "a pow," followed soon thereafter by Spector emerging from the residence holding a gun in his bloodied hand: